


Underneath

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cursed Sam Winchester, Dean Sam Cas and Rowena Are Family, Fingering, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Magiclal Weight Gain, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Rowena MacLeod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:49:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When the brothers stumble across a powerful witch, she decides to take them out of the game by cursing Sam - not least because she knows these brothers are lovers as well as hunters.One curse and a couple of hundred pounds later, Dean and Sam both have to learn to adjust to these new circumstances, while Dean also still has Cas to worry about.





	Underneath

The only picture Dean has of Sam is ridiculously out of date, now; it probably looks like a whole different person which is why, when he goes asking around the bus depots, and the train stations, and follows up a few leads at some car hire companies, he just sticks to providing a description.

The thing is that, while Dean is very good at what he does, so is Sam, and the downside of looking for his brother is that Sam knows all his tricks. 

He should do; John taught them some, and the rest Sam knows, he learned from his big brother.

But Dean is nothing if not resourceful, and that’s why, some two weeks after Sam snuck out in the middle of the night, Dean finds him skulking out of a supermarket, pushing a cart in front of him towards a beat up old Volvo.

There’s a group of guys gathered around the door, and Dean feels murder burning in his veins as they grin and nudge each other and start after Sam.

He gets out, looks carefully around him, but Sam’s chosen to come out here late and these bozos and them are the only people around.

By the time he’s come up on them, one of them’s snatched the cart out of Sam’s hands, and two more have rounded on his brother, prodding at him, coming up with names Dean hasn’t heard since his brief, sporadic episodes of schooling a few decades previous.

Much as beating the shit out of these fucks appeals to him very much just then, they are so low down on his list of priorities they’re practically on the deck, so he settles for drawing his gun and pressing it hard into the temple of the nearest guy.

“Take a fucking hike.”

They’re gone in seconds, and Dean stares at Sam, watches his brother looking everywhere but at him, and he doesn’t know what to say.

What to do.

In the end, he settles for picking up Sam’s groceries, that amount to a bag of Slimfast milkshakes and some fruit, and grabbing Sam’s arm and leading him back to their car.

And from there, taking them home.

++

About three weeks before, they got stupid.

It happens; they’re old hands at this, but they’re not perfect (their track record speaks for that, so many screw ups that Dean’s kind of glad they don’t need a license to do what they do; if they did, it’d surely have been pulled by now).

The witch, Dean figures after, must have run into them before though he’s damned if he can remember seeing her anywhere, but anyway she knows who they are and what they are, and decides on some damage limitation.

The way she does it makes him think it’s about vengeance as well, and that she knows, somehow, about he and Sam in _other_ ways.

Whatever, she’s powerful and fast, and leaves Dean wishing he hadn’t pissed off Rowena over that thing with Cas, over what happened next, because she’s no longer taking their calls.

And the angel that could have fixed this is still in her care, blocked off from their prayers by her magic, and maybe (Dean hopes Cas is better, hopes he’s fully recovered or at least on the way there, and hopes one day Cas will see how hurt and angry he was and forgive him and then come home) in no real condition to travel back to them from wherever Rowena’s hidden them. 

But that means it’s just him and Sam, and however they get through this, they’ll need to do it themselves.

++

Dean doesn’t ask Sam why he left. He wants to. The answer is obvious when he looks at his brother, sitting on an old trunk Dean pulled up from storage for him since he can’t fit in any of the chairs, now, but it’s not the _real_ answer.

Dean knows why Sam left; he guesses what he’s desperate to ask, yet terrified to, is why Sam feels he _had_ to.

So he doesn’t bring it up. All the same, they can’t just keep going like they were before Sam took off, because the last thing Dean wants is waking up to find Sam’s gone again.

He has to do, say, something.

“We’ll fix this,” he says, putting a bowl of oatmeal, with carefully cubed bananas, done how Sam likes (Dean has never, ever, met anybody else who has to have their bananas cubed, instead of sliced) and a glass of OJ, down in front of him. “Just…”

_Don’t leave me_ sounds so pathetic, like this is about him and not Sam, but those couple of weeks spent searching were among the most horrible of Dean’s life.

He’s lost Cas, temporary he hopes, but every day he becomes convinced Cas is staying away because he wants to, not because he’s still so sick and hurt that he has to and that’s like something grinding his guts.

Rowena…. Okay, she was growing on him, he can’t lie, and he can’t hate her for putting Cas first. That’s the kind of family Cas deserves.

Jack…. Dean shuts that down hard.

Sam…. He can’t lose his brother. He can’t exist in a world where Sam isn’t with him, not again, and yeah, he knows it’s a sign of how damaged he is but he doesn’t care.

Things are what they are, and he needs to know that Sam isn’t going to abandon him again, go out there into a world where he can’t blend in like before, where he’s not able to look after himself, where Dean won’t be there to watch his back.

Sam pokes at the oatmeal, but doesn’t even try to eat it.

“I’m not going anywhere,’ he says, and pushes the bowl away from him, leans back a little, looking as low as Dean’s ever seen him.

The trunk groans under his weight and, for one wrenching moment, Dean actually thinks Sam’s going to cry.

++

They find ways to adjust.

Hunts…. Hunts are off, and Dean fields any he can to whatever hunters are still alive and in the business, but those calls for help that have to go unanswered…

...have to go unanswered. Dean has his hands full, and Sam needs him now, and that’s that.

There’s a couple of online stores who do gents’ clothing in the upper range of sizes; it takes coaxing Sam to even look at them, but his brother’s practical - he can’t just walk around in the same filthy jogging pants and t-shirt so within a couple of days he has a new wardrobe.

Dean wants to tell his brother this is all just temporary, but the fact is that there’s not a single counter curse in the whole bunker archive that’s done a damn thing to help.

Sam admits that, in those couple of weeks he was gone, he even made himself not eat for two whole days, just drank water, that was it.

All he did was pass out from hunger, and when he woke up had to find the strength to get back onto his feet.

He didn’t lose a single pound.

It’s starting to look like this is their life now, and if it is, then it is.

Sam’s strong. He’ll cope, and Dean will help, and they will get through.

But it takes a while to convince Sam to touch him again.

He’s not an ass; he’ll love Sam even if they never have sex again, but he knows Sam needs that reassurance, that Dean still finds him attractive, still loves him like that.

He could be a Wendigo, and Dean would still love him, want him, and he tells Sam that, over and over, while he’s on his back on the war room table, Sam’s fingers in him, drawing such sharp pleasure that he knows he’s babbling, but then he’s coming, and Sam pulls him upright, stroking him through it, to kiss him.

++

They claw their lives back one inch, one battle at a time.

Two months on, Dean realises they were tackling the subject of a counter spell all wrong.

They can’t undo what the witch did, can’t shift the extra weight that’s part of Sam now, that isn’t going away.

But there is a spell that negates its effect.

Once it’s cast, Dean no longer has to help Sam up the stairs. No longer has to listen to him wheeze as he gets into and out of the shower, or bends over to try and put on his shoes.

He can run as fast as he did before, now; he can fight like he did, before, as well, and takes Dean down to the mat fast and easy (and maybe they do a little celebrating while they’re down there, Dean giving himself over to his little brother because he’s earned it).

It’s pretty damn funny to see assholes, human as well, find out that three hundred pound guy is packing a surprise as well as everything else, and Dean won’t deny just holding back sometimes to let Sam do his thing.

His brother needs that, all of it, to accept that maybe his body has changed, but _he_ hasn’t.

And then, one night, lying in Sam’s arms, Dean hears the bunker door open.

The first voice he hears is cutting, indignant, and he sits up, careful not to wake Sam, wondering what has brought Rowena back after all this time.

Fear grips him, for a painfully long instant, that she is bringing him news he won’t want to hear, but then there’s a second voice and Dean’s out of the bed so fast he almost stumbles.

“...my family were in trouble, and you didn’t…”

He doesn’t hear anything else, blood rushing in his ears as he barrels through the bunker to the library and there they are.

Cas is leaning on Rowena, who looks as pissed off as the last time they saw her.

But the angel…

He still looks like he’s on the mend (Dean will learn later that this is as good as Cas is ever going to be, he’ll never walk properly again, but his Grace is as recharged as it’ll ever be, not that anything other than him being alive and home matters at all), but he looks _good_.

Dean comes to a sharp halt feet from him, suddenly unsure of where he stands with Cas, when it doesn’t seem so long ago he just pulled his once-lost angel into his arms.

Cas smiles at him, and it’s all there, a wordless exchange, and then Cas is hobbling towards him, embracing him so tight that Dean almost aches.

He doesn’t mind.

++

It takes Sam a while to let Cas go and, once the excitement and relief at having their angel back has settled a little, Sam starts to lose his confidence.

He shifts, pulling the blanket around himself, but Cas is having none of it.

He cups Sam’s face, draws his focus gently back.

When he kisses Sam’s forehead, Sam actually sobs, and it’s all Dean can do not to throw his arms around them both.

Then there’s a deep blue glow, moving from Cas across Sam’s body, growing in intensity until it’s near blinding.

When it’s done, the blanket falls away and Sam is as he was, a few months, a few hundred pounds, and a curse ago, and he looks down at himself like he can’t believe it.

Dean almost can’t either, but it’s true, he can see it, and this time he does yank them both into his arms.

++

Rowena leaves them for nearly a week, but returns and reassures them that her sister witch won’t trouble them again.

They don’t ask for more details than that.

She also takes back her old room, the one next to Cas’s, but it takes her a while to settle around him, Dean, again.

Dean gets it, he does. Given the animosity between her, and their angel, at the start, the blood and the violence, and the deaths, he’s always stunned that they became so close.

But they did, and when he said that to Cas, when he pushed him away to the point that he lost the right to be the one who cared for Cas, who carried him home and sat vigil and worked at getting him better, Rowena stepped up.

But before that, through the battles they’d fought and won together, she’d become their family, too and since Cas is reconciled with them...

Which is how they come to be sitting up, one night, long after Sam and Cas have both turned in, sipping whiskey in the quiet.

They don’t say a word; they don’t have to.

If there’s something they both get, it’s family. How they can drive you to be your best and your worst, be responsible for the greatest love and the deepest pain you’ll ever experience.

But it’s something better, easier, shared, and Dean’s glad that she and Cas came home.


End file.
